WordPress themes that are SEO Friendly and load faster

Get to know of some of the best WordPress themes that will increase your Google Page Ranking. That is, WP themes that are SEO friendly, mobile responsive, and load faster.

Choosing a WordPress theme for better search ranking

One of the most important decisions that a business, blogger, or professional who wants to create a website with WordPress has to make is deciding which kind of theme or template to use. There are thousands of themes available and each developer says hers/his is the best. It therefore can be quite a daunting task to choose the perfect one.

Let’s first start with factors to consider before buying a WordPress theme.

Selecting WordPress themes by Category

WordPress themes are grouped into different categories as listed below. You have to make the choice of where you fall;

Business website themes
Magazine or Newspaper themes
Blog themes
eCommerce themes
Nonprofit Organization themes
Technology Themes
Education Themes
Photo or Fashion themes
Personal Profile themes
e.t.c

WordPress Theme Options

A very important feature to look out for is the theme options. This is particularly important if you have no HTML or CSS experience. The more theme options the better the theme. This is because theme options are what would allow you to customize both the default functionality and the design of your theme at the very minimum. Below is a look at a theme’s options that you should consider at the very least;

Upload logo option
Color Change options (Background, header, widget, content, text, and footer)
Font change options (Theme typography)

WP Theme Functionality (Features)

WordPress theme functionalities are what I refer to as theme pillars. They play a great role in determining your page load speed. Some of the WP theme features that you should check include;

Headers
Sidebars
Widgets
Navigation menu
Comments
Post Format options
Page format options
Homepage format notions
Footer

WP Theme Compatibility

If you are going to go for a theme always check whether it can work alone without any error or if it requires some premium plugin to function. Try to avoid WP themes that come bundled with plugins. It might seem like a great idea when you buy a theme that provides you with a premium plugin for free but the problem is you will not be separate the plugins from the theme. The beauty of separating plugins and themes is that if a plugin breaks something you can simply deactivate it without any worry.

SEO friendly WordPress theme

If you want to rank higher on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex, you should go for a SEO-optimized WordPress theme. There are lots of things to consider when you are looking for a WordPress theme that is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly but key among them include

Responsive (mobile responsiveness): You want to make sure that the theme you choose is responsive by responsive we mean that the theme has been designed to look good (or fit) on all mobile devices
Fast Load time (speed): Page load time has an effect on bounce rate which in turn affects your Google Page rankings.
Security: The way your theme is built affects your website security.
Supports of Rich Snippet (structured data): This is basically the extra information that appears in search information (Author, Post Dates, Reviews if you have any, images e.t.c). That can make a website standout, give more clicks, traffic e.t.c

WP Theme Support

Be sure to do some research on how fast the developer responds to customer complaints. Most of the time when WordPress or plugins like Woocommerce are updated, your theme is also supposed to be updated to be compatible. If your developer is not available for theme updates your website might break or be vulnerable to hacking.

7. Gutenberg Ready WordPress Theme

Ensure that your themes are compatible with the latest version of WordPress (5.0+) which uses a New Block Editor (learn more about Gutenberg).

WordPress themes that are SEO Friendly

You probably are not going to find a free theme with all options that have listed above. So all the themes that I am going to recommend are premium. If you were looking for a free SEO-friendly WordPress theme then this marks the end of your journey in this article. For premium, let’s jump into it and go to the themes that I recommend.

NOTE: All the themes that I am going to recommend below are from different theme stores. I have purchased a number of themes from them and I have had a good experience. All themes listed have the following features;

Super Fast Load speed: Load in a blink of an eye thus improving your Google search rankings
Social Media Integration: No need of installing social media sharing buttons. They are built-in
Child theme: Comes with a child theme to keep your CSS or HTML changes in case of an update
Fonts: Contain a wide range of fonts (also come with 630 Google fonts)
Adsense Integration: Build-in Adsense inserting areas for monetization
Reviews: have a build-in rating system which you can enable if need be.
Woocommerce: are compatible with woocommerce so you can build a shop page anytime
Responsive: Works well with mobile devices.

1. Avada (Blog or Magazine) WordPress theme

This is an eye-catching WordPress theme that comes in several layouts. It makes your blog look professional. It can be used for building a business website, personal websites, eCommerce sites, or blogs. It is the most popular WordPress theme on Envato.